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Comment Re:No (Score 1) 397

The answer is obvious to me. The aliens are on a Yuuge Spaceship traveling towards Earth for an "Invade and Exterminate" mission. Anytime the Spaceship gets between us and their star, we see dimming(not dining you damn autocorrect, however that'll come after extermination). Eat spicy foods, cause I understand the aliens like their food spicy.

Comment Re:This should be fun. (Score 4, Interesting) 757

I'll list my reasons.
1) The all encompassing infrastructure/interoperability with our Macs(5), iPhones(3), iPads(5), Apple TVs(5), Apple TimeCapsules(5) and Apple Watches around the house for me and my wife. We are easily and effortlessly connected to everything. She still works and unfortunately has to use Windows at work.But that will too soon end.
2) Keychain and iCloud.
3) Low cost. This probably requires explanation. My main usage is Logic Pro X($199 for all machines, but equivalent s/w on PCs would require approx $1,000 per copy). Final Cut Pro X($300 for all five machines. Equivalent s/w for PC, I shudder to think, but would exceed $5,000 per year easily). I haven't really priced this stuff for over 4 years so I really don't know. Maybe someone can correct me. Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X costs nothing for upgrades, would be thousands for PC. Other s/w, like Mathematica or Tex or CGAL would be the same for other platforms, so I won't mention it.
4) Unix under the hood, which coming from BSD, SVR4, Solaris, Linux programming(Microsoft too but that doesn't apply here), and having been a(now retired for 4 years) programmer since 1971, is a plus.
5) Finally having had to use Windows in my daytime job, I no longer have to face Windows, nor subscribe to MSDN(I all frankness, I stopped subscribing to MSDN about 10 years ago)
6) Bliss

Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 515

I'll add one more. Around 1982, we had to test printed circuit boards with microprocessors. So we had to come up with a way to control the bus from an external device. Fluke 9020 under GPIB from an HP-1000 computer system fit the bill. However, we did not have a specific compiler and loader for that situation. So we had to write the test program in assembly, and then hand assemble it, load it to RAM, and then run it from RAM. It was fun. If you wanted to run a C program, first you had a compiler translate it to assembly language, then hand assembled it. By the time 1984 came around tools began to appear. Some we wrote, some we bought. To this day I cherish my capability of whenever I look at a piece of code, let it be C, C++(with virtual tables), Swift, Fortran or whatever, translating it into machine language in my head, however faulty it may be, and thus having an insight as to how it operates. One thing HP-1000 CPU had was the indirect bit in memory addresses. That was very interesting.

Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 515

Anecdotally, I learned Dartmouth Basic in 1972 in Bellevue Community College to prepare the report for a Physics Lab. Then at University of Washington took Engineering 141 for Fortran programming on CDC6400 thru IBM26 punched cards. In 1973 learned RPG-II(or was it IV I don't remember) to run task scheduling reports for our group on a Varian73. In 1974, I was programming an SDS920 as an ATE to test electronic circuit cards. In 1975 I was programming on PDP-11 RSX11 in Basic and Fortran, and on an HP21MX in Fortran4. Generating ATE programs and circuit analysis programs. Then came VAXen, SparCen, writing compilers, interpreters, software for aircraft, SunOs, Solaris, Linux and finally exclusively Mac OS X.

Submission + - Kansas drops plan for municipal broadband ban (kansas.com)

Mokurai writes: "Facing public backlash over a Senate bill that would outlaw community broadband services statewide, Sen. Julia Lynn, R-Olathe, announced on Monday the postponement of hearings set to take place this week. Senate Bill 304 would prohibit cities and counties from building public broadband networks."

The bill was reportedly "introduced by John Federico, a cable industry lobbyist."

I didn't see this on SlashDot when it was introduced, but the Internet definitely responded to the threat of damage.

Comment What to trust (Score 1) 125

If spread sheet says 2+2=5 , what do you trust? The spread sheet , which has huge amount of computational mathematics behind it, or your eyes which has, well you , behind it. With the state of mathematics education, I'd trust the spreadsheet. Besides the mathematics may have changed since the last version. What was Edgar Allan Poe's law? Or was it Nathan? Let me ask the computer..

Submission + - Assange Case: US "Does Not Recognise" International Law Re Diplomatic Assylum (foreignpolicy.com) 1

TrueSatan writes: Despite previously stating that it would not involve itself in the UK vs Equador dispute regarding Assange the US State Department declared today that the United States does not believe in the concept of ‘diplomatic asylum' as a matter of international law.

Following Equador's action in the Organisation of American States the US issued the following statement, "The United States is not a party to the 1954 OAS Convention on Diplomatic Asylum and does not recognize the concept of diplomatic asylum as a matter of international law," the office of Spokesperson Victoria Nuland said in a Friday statement. "We believe this is a bilateral issue between Ecuador and the United Kingdom and that the OAS has no role to play in this matter."

  This is directly contrary to previous US positions where it has given diplomatic assylum to dissidents of other regimes for instance Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty who was granted refuge in the US embassy in Budapest Oct '56 -May '71.

Comment Re:yes (Score 1) 1010

Professor Hacker's article is a modest proposal based on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and a very good one. The article is apparently written for the celebration of the eightieth anniversary of the publication of the book. It's a trap to get people to discuss the antithesis of his real point. It is beautifully done, and suckered in a lot of people.

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